Strange Vibration

I had to replace my draft shaft and went with an OEM drive shaft. After replacing the drive shaft the truck started to vibrate between 30 - 40 mph and between 60 - 70 mph. The interesting thing is that it doesn't do it all the time and you only feel the vibration in the seat and gas pedal. I've thought about removing the drive shaft and getting it checked to make sure it's balanced properly, but thought no way an OEM drive shaft would be out of balance. I had the tires rebalanced just to rule that out and it's still doing it. I also checked the engine mounts and they look good too.

I replaced the suspension a few months ago, but didn't replace the leaf springs (they have 190k miles on them). After replacing the suspension the truck was fine and there was no vibration. Could the vibration now be related to the leaf springs or should I pull the drive shaft and have it checked ? Not sure what else to check at this point.

 

If your truck is an auto, try leaving it in 4th and see if it still does the same thing

 

Ok, I’ll drive that and see what happens. Took it off-road a few weeks ago but never went above 25mph. If it doesn’t vibrate would you know what it could be?

 

From what I’ve read on here, if the vibration goes away in 4th then it’s likely torque converter related. Keep us posted!

 

Thanks! Will do

 

Things got a little crazy with the holidays and then afterwards, so wasn't able to do anything with the truck. I ran it with the 4WD like @BassAckwards suggested and couldn't replicate the vibration. At this point we're leaning to it being an issue with the drive shaft. Have one more thing that we want to do which should help with determining if it's the drive shaft.

 

Did you run it in 4wd or 4th gear?

 

4WD

 

Most of the time when folks have a vibration that goes away when shifting into 4wd, it is needle bearing related - which is on the driver side of the front diff

You mentioned you replaced your suspension recently. Did you lift the front at all? Next time it is vibrating, try shifting into 4high right then and see if the vibes go away.

 

Hmm.. didn’t consider the needle bearing as a possible culprit. I’ll do the 4high shift next time it happens. To answer the suspension question no I didn’t lift it.

Part of what we did today was lift the rear wheels off the ground and ran it at different speeds. When we did this there wasn’t any vibration at the speeds that it would normally vibrate.

 

Been busy with work and haven't had time to do much with the truck. Was finally able to look at some things with a friend last week. Based on everything we've looked at, we're at the point where we think it's the driveshaft. Called around and found a local shop that we replace all the ujoints and rebalance it for $466. Going to go this route and hope this will fixed it .

 

Thats insane to replace ujoints and rebalance. The ujoint job isnt too hard. Plenty of videos on YouTube about how to do it. Probably would take 2 hours. Then while you have it off the truck, take it to a different shop.

I had some vibration with my Tom Woods one piece driveshaft and it was $40 to rebalance. I think the vibration speeds were similar. It took the shop 3 hours but it's probably because there were a couple people in front of me

 

I would guess that the drive angle is the problem.

 

Let me see if I can find another shop that will just rebalance and see what they say it will cost.

 

Thought it could be this but everything looks good and I don’t have a lift on the truck.

 

Been a while since I posted; have been busy with work and family. Finally good around to it and ended up replacing the drive shaft with a new OEM one. My brother was able to get me a really good price through someone he knows at a Toyota dealer. No more vibration regardless of the speed . Hope this helps anyone having a similar issue.